In an information processor which is also called computer or the like, an operating system (hereinafter, referred to as OS) manages data in a storage device by a file system. The file system manages data in a hierarchical structure composed of: files as abstract concepts representing respective sets of data in the storage device handled by the OS; directories (also referred to as folders) for storing pigeonholed and sorted—files; and higher level directories for storing pigeonholed and sorted-directories. In such a file system, a character string indicating the location of each file or directory in a storage device, that is, a character string for specifying a desired file or directory is referred to as “path”. The character string of a path is constructed of rows of directories and files in the hierarchical structure. The rows are coupled together by delimiters.
Such an information processor is connected with various peripheral devices, for example, a display, a printer, a scanner, and various actuators. Usually, these devices can work by using device-by-device-use application for device. In this case, devices used by an information processor are classified into local devices and remote devices. The local device is a device directly connected to an information processor, and the remote device is a device connected to another information processor connected through a network.
In general, the use of these devices is carried out in the above-mentioned file system.
That is, with regard to the local devices and remote devices, device-files and directories are created for each device, and these files and directories are managed by a file system similarly with ordinary files and directories for data. The use of each device carried out through a device-use application, in other words, is carried out through a device file managed by a file system.
As the above-mentioned use of a device by an information processor, there are known examples disclosed in, for example, the following Patent Document 1 to Patent Document 4. As the use of a remote device, there is known an example described in the following Non-patent Document 1.
[Patent Document 1] JP-B1-3456599
[Patent Document 2] JP-A-2005-182624
[Patent Document 3] JP-A-2004-310560
[Patent Document 4] JP-A-H6-43959
[Non-patent Document 1] “The Design and Implementation of a Generic Framework for Remote Device Control” in Research Report (February, 2003) of Study Group for System Software and Operating System, in Information Processing Society of Japan, presented by Junji Sato, Eiji Kawai, Yutaka Nakamura, Kazutoshi Fujikawa, and Hideki Sunahara.
In the above-mentioned use of a device in an information processor, usually, a device-use application has restriction of some kind with respect to processing time or the like related to the utilization of the device. For this reason, there is a possibility that the information processor incurs trouble if a device-use application utilizes a device that does not conform to the restriction. However, the fact is that measures sufficient to cope with this have not been conventionally taken.
The invention has been made with the above-mentioned circumstances as a background. An object of the invention is to make it possible to implement the following with respect to an information processor so constructed that it can use a device and an information processing system constructed of such information processors: to easily determine whether or not a device to be used conforms to restriction on the device-use application and to effectively prevent trouble from being incurred by the use of a device.